Phlogistón is “burning up” in Greek.
Antoine Lavoisier named the inert part of air azote for
“lifeless” in Greek, but in English we call it
nitrogen. The Scottish physician Daniel Rutherford discovered
nitrogen in 1772, it was isolated first by Joseph Priestley in
1774, and it was named by the French chemist Jean-Antoine Chaptal
in 1790 because it was found in nitric acid,
“nitre-forming” in Greek.